Roll20 is doing some amazing things as of late, the new stuff with fog of war is awesome and I love it! With that said though, even the developers have said that what they are doing is bleeding edge for browsers and on top of that a lot of people are having issues with lag and errors on their browsers. With that said, do you think that maybe its about time that an official Roll20 Desktop application be considered? Obviously its going to be a lot of work and something that's not going to happen over night, but if Roll20 is already pushing the limits of what a browser is capable of it may be a good idea to invest time into an app. I am not suggesting that the webpage games be done away with, but limiting more extensive and hardware heavy features to an app that is optimized and built around such capabilities. The down side to this is that it opens up the floor for features that would end up being app only, and exclusivity is a touchy subject. We are at the limits though, the devs have stated that whats being done with Roll20 currently is bleeding edge for web browsers. I don't want to put words in their mouths but I read that as they are being extensively limited on what they can and can't do and that's kind of a bummer. I don't know, I honestly feel like moving forward a desktop application is the best way to go but I am curious as to everyone's opinions on the matter. If this has already been suggested previously and I missed it, I am sorry for posting a suggestion that already exists.

+1. I do not understand enough what implications it might have, but to my untrained ears it sounds like a good idea. If that could give us better performance and more advanced features, I'd be all for it :)

While Roll20 has hired more people recently, it's still a very, very small team. Creating a native application would mean rewriting most of the VTT from scratch and maintaining two codebases, not something that's feasible for a team so small when there are so many existing bugs and desired features. While they could do something like create an Electron app, that doesn't solve any of the problems this suggestion purports to fix, since at that point you're basically just rendering the web app inside a browser that can only visit one website.

well my take is close to brian's above. i would rather the dev team focus on fixing what they have first then think about a small set of app extensions if you will ie something that would reduce api need for the niche users like 1.players using a real tabletop and live players who project the map onto a table. yes they have tablet for some player use and what not but if an app was built with the output method of a projector and would reduce the need for api all the better. 2. for are API script ninjas and the like i would like to see the team official integrate some of the improvements like aaron's recursive tables, import export roll table support. 3. a more refined LFG system and player directory for example when a play says they want to play 5E at 5pm there time and a GM list a 5E game in LFG at what would be 5pm there time maybe a notification to the player saying new game found. and maybe a way for GM to see how many players who are listing active to play like games list active to play. where the player simply says i'm in all the games i want or i'm free of friday at 5pm see what i mean. oops went off on a tangent. in short i do not dislike your idea of a true roll20 app that could perform the task of the website and maybe even off load the video and audio hosting. i just do not see it happening any time soon